When Garf opened his refrigerator, he saw a jar of purple pickles beside the carton of expired milk. This was strange as, only yesterday, they were green. Garf stood in his itchy annoyance before the refrigerator, his red, black-striped robe hanging off his slumped body like an old, worn-out curtain.
Continue reading “Garf and the Purple Pickles by Landon Galliott”
“She was reckless and calculated. Sharp but dreamy. I think she was lost. Overcome by the world’s endless configurations.” A wave of chills swept over me. Papa was only eloquent when talking about her, so I tried to soak it all in–every syllable, hand gesture, intonation–to paint a picture of her in my head. Papa never even showed me photos, because as he said, “It’s in the past.” I had stored a few features such as angular nose and fair skin in my reservoir until then, but those were surface-level. I had been yearning for characteristics to vitalize the shell of a person in my head.
Continue reading “Remnants of a Silence by Saul Brauns”
Russell Freeman, long white hair tied back, dressed in jeans and white cotton shirt, got off the bus and walked down a side street of the city he grew up in. He looked around and shook his head. Urban renewal in the late sixties had taken much of the character out of the center of the city and replaced it with parking ramps, cheap prefab buildings and fake facades. According to city elites the old sturdy brick buildings of the past were obsolete and old fashioned. We must look to a bright new future said the politicians as money flowed to demolition companies.
“Renewal my ass,” Russell mumbled.
Continue reading “Cheap Whiskey and a Crumpled Dollar Bill by Lee Conrad”
He took a swing at me. I braced for impact as it battered my jaw.
Big mistake, I thought, as I got low, latched on, picked him up. Buddy laughed; guy was having fun with me. Fine. I spun around and took him down.
He snatched my beard, mashed his face into mine. I tore free, pinned his arms, prepared to strike. His feral eyes widened; he knew his fate.
I put my lips on his bare belly and blew. My son squealed and flailed, then stiffened and vibrated. Electrocuted by elation.
Continue reading “Death on Rotation by Brandon Nadeau”
Wildlife
I have either finished turning invisible or the local wildlife considers me as threatening as Jane Jetson. The wild things are taking advantage of our slipping sense of surrounding and are slowly, yet steadily organizing. I present three instances for your examination. (And although some of you will not detect acts of duplicity in these seemingly random events, I say that is what they want us to believe.)
Continue reading “Week 503: Further Adventures in Wildlife; Six Pack of Encouraging Words; and “Like, Boo, Dude”–PDQ Peety’s List of 80’s Halloween Horror Films”
The metallic aftertaste of recycled oxygen lingered in my throat, each breath a sweltering struggle to survive. I tracked the merciless white sun as dust devils spun in the distance. Their swirling forms juxtaposed against the still figures before me.
Continue reading “Chrome and Marrow by Maudie Bryant”
The M’sieur Fleurnoir depicted in the press was not a far cry from the M’sieur Fleurnoir with whom I dined at the Cabaret Mort. There was the same baleful demeanor, the same pale gleam of malice in the eye, and his remarks, few as they were, never failed to be less than cutting. His silences of course were legendary, and as they grew in stature, so too did his ambition to attain the kind of silence the press described as “towering.” For those who liked their Fleurnoir undiluted, Wednesday’s interminable evenings were considered the best time to catch him. Being one of his few old friends, rather than one of his many ex-friends, I was permitted to sup with him, and sup we did, after a fashion. The odd oyster, a Vin Mariana or two, followed perhaps by an apricot or a dollop of blancmange. Fleurnoir always ate with an air of distaste, seeming to savour his reputation as one who’d subsisted for decades on a diet of raisins and boiled cabbage. He told me he’d never in his life tasted boiled cabbage – that, he said, was a newspaper invention! He had however lived for years on a diet of stale chocolate and gutrot coffee. Stickler for detail, Fleurnoir. Especially if the subject under discussion was himself.
Continue reading “The Fleurnoir I Knew by Geraint Jonathan”
I’ve been thinking a lot about Kurt Cobain. Not so much how he ended it, that lonely moment above the garage, surrounded by impenetrably dense, green, tall trees, surrounded by nobody. Not that, as I sit in the stall nearest the far window, the toilet closed, my knees bent so my Target sneakers don’t show beneath the door.
Continue reading “Nevermind by Matt Liebowitz”
Tom first heard about it crouching over an illicit transistor built by an enterprising boy in tech class. It was breaktime, he and his mates were tucked behind the outer wall of the gym; their ‘secret’ hiding place teachers turned a blind eye to.
Continue reading “A Life lesson from Jimi by Fiona Sinclair.”
In the muted afternoon light that leaked through the curtains high on the cellar wall the old man, sweaty and disoriented, reached out from a nap he had not planned to take. He lurched forward and tumbled headfirst out of his recliner and up against the television, two feet in front. He cursed himself.
Continue reading “At Sea by Andrew Bennett”
literally stories 